Bees Solve Hard Computing Problems Faster Than Supercomputers

Monday, October 25, 2010 - 16:30 in Mathematics & Economics

Bumblebee In a new study, researchers report that bumblebees were able to figure out the most efficient routes among several computer-controlled "flowers," quickly solving a complex problem that even stumps supercomputers. Queen Mary, University of LondonYet another reason to save them from extinction We already know bees are pretty good at facial recognition, and researchers have shown they can also be effective air-quality monitors. Here's one more reason to keep them around: They're smarter than computers. Bumblebees can solve the classic "traveling salesman" problem, which keeps supercomputers busy for days. They learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they find the flowers in a different order, according to a new British study. The traveling salesman problem is an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-hardNP-hard (read: very hard) problem in computer science; it involves finding the shortest possible route between cities, visiting each city only once. Bees are the first animals to...

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